There's science behind smooching

SPOTLIGHT KISSING

February 14, 2009|By Jason George, Tribune Newspapers

If you kiss your sweetheart this Valentine's Day and find it especially appealing, credit the candlelight, the champagne--or maybe just good gene compatibility. "[Kissing] is not just for fun and sexuality. You are passing vital information about who you are," said Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University. "When you kiss you're not just picking up if they're a nice guy, you're picking up if he'll be a good father." Fisher knows all this from studying brain activity, and she'll discuss her research this weekend in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she'll take part in the symposium "The Science of Kissing." Men and women approach the act differently, according to recent studies. One found that women use kissing to assess a mate's health and maintain a relationship; men place less importance on kissing and are more likely to use it to increase the likelihood of having sex. Men are also twice as likely as women to have sex with a bad kisser, according to the same study by professors Susan Hughes, Marissa Harrison and Gordon Gallup Jr.